The corner of his mouth curved. Just slightly. “No. It is not.”
I threw the second pillow at him anyway, more out of principle than anger. This time he let it bounce off his chest. His laughter followed me out the door, warm and unhurried, settling under my skin like something I’d have to deal with later.
four
ALIANA
Ididn’t sleep.
I lay in my acclimation suite for six hours, at least according to the glowing panel on the wall. The damned orc’s voice filled my mind, but it was one word that I kept fixating on.
Choose.
The suite was everything the Sanctuary brochure had promised: temperature-controlled, softly lit, equipped with a selection of calming teas I hadn’t touched and a pre-loaded tablet of orientation materials I’d read three times without absorbing a single word. It was designed to make a person feel settled.
It was doing the opposite.
Sixty-two hours left, approximately. Give or take.
I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest.
The rational accounting went like this: I had entered the program as voluntarily as anyone could in these circumstances. I had consented to a match. A match had been made, by rulesthat allowed the Sanctuary system to function. Rules that every signatory species had agreed to honor.
The male waiting down the hall had followed every protocol in his own culture and tradition, stood in front of witnesses, and won a challenge. And in doing so, won a claim on me.
He had not lied to me. He had not threatened me. He had, somewhat absurdly, told me to take my time.
And then there was the other accounting. The one I kept trying not to do.
He had looked at me the way people rarely did, as though I were a problem worth the effort of solving, and saidI did not expect you.
He had said he wanted a mate who would challenge him, fight with him, rule beside him, and he had said it the way people say things they’ve been waiting a long time to say out loud.
And he laughed.
Urran would not have said that. Urran would have given me a farmhouse would likely never wonder what I was thinking. His profile practically said he expected me not to say much of anything.
I thought about that for a long time.
Then I got up, splashed water on my face, and spent twenty minutes on my hair. I had standards, after all, and my curls are a gift from my mother and those before her. I put my mother’s bracelet on my wrist.
I sat back down on the edge of the bed.
The decision had been made somewhere in the dark, without fanfare, without a dramatic internal monologue to mark the moment. I recognized it the way you recognize the end of a storm: not because anything announces it, but because the air changes and you realize you’ve stopped bracing.
I would not wait sixty-two hours. No need to run down the clock. I had made a choice, and waiting around in a temperature-controlled room would not make me more certain than I already was.
I pressed the call panel by the door.
It took Counselor Patel four minutes to appear, which I interpreted as professionalism rather than the Sanctuary having predicted this exact moment and stationed her nearby. She took me in wordlessly, her face a careful mask that only broadcast serenity.
“I’d like to move forward with the ceremony,” I said. “Today. If that’s possible.”
Patel held my gaze for a moment. “You’re certain?”
“I’m choosing,” I said. “That’s what I have. My choice.”
She nodded once and reached for her tablet.
